


Like The Movies

by batyalewbel



Category: Force Over Distance, Stargate Universe
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Ginn TJ Greer Wray Scott and Chloe, fanfiction based on fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1620833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyalewbel/pseuds/batyalewbel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eli loves movies. He always has.</p><p>A snapshot of what happened to Eli in the aftermath of Cleanwhiteroom's epic saga Force Over Distance</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like The Movies

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously all the kudos and love for the fic that this is based on because wow it's really good.

Eli loves movies. He always has.

Movies, tv shows, comic books, anime, and of course…video games. His passions are endless.

People look at him and they see a child with his nose in a comic book and a controller in his hands.

And that’s fine because most people have never understood.

They see the math as the only saving grace of a young man who wraps his insecurities and immaturities around himself like a blanket.

Nobody has ever understood it’s his only shield against a world that takes too much and gives too little; a world that forced him to grow up far sooner than anybody ever realized. So he turned to his math and his games, because they were comforting and solid, and always there for him when nothing else was.

He thinks that Young might have been one of the few people who understood that, and by the end, perhaps Rush had too.

It’s hard to guess how much Rush understood, but there was something…

It had been hard to watch both men in their decline. First Rush spiraled down like a shooting star; like lightning; like something that burned too brightly and for too little time. Then in a final blaze of epic glory, he had been gone. Flying off into D-Branes and hopefully rising to something better.

_He remembers standing in the gateroom as an unconscious Young came through the event horizon. Like somebody was pushing him through, as gently as one could._

_He remembers standing there next to Chloe, Greer, Wray, and TJ, seeing expressions that surely mirrored his own. TJ was up the ramp in a second, checking his pulse but Eli already knew._

_He had dreaded Young staying with Rush, and he had dreaded him returning, because everybody knew Rush wasn’t coming back._

_“He’s unconscious,” TJ called and Greer was shaking his head. Camille had a hand brought to her mouth._

_TJ knelt there, a silhouette against the bright blue of the pulsating wavelengths that looked like an ocean encircled by heavy metal. Next to her was the prone form of Colonel Young, and it might have been one of the saddest sights Eli had ever seen._

No, scratch that.

The following year was full of sights that were equally heartbreaking. As he watched Colonel Everett Young slowly come undone, unraveling, unmade. As he shattered apart in slow motion, there was a coalescing of something distinctly like Rush in his personality and his demeanor. In his intellect and in his actions. In the white Prius he started driving and the notebooks he began to fill with equations as casually as one might write in a journal.

It was unnerving and upsetting, and reminded Eli of a lot of things. Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, like Casino Royale; like those darker episodes of Star Trek where crew members get separated and have to live a life apart from everyone they care about; like the ending of Cowboy Bebop which made him cry every time. It made him think of those movies he had a hard time watching like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or The Diving Bell and Butterfly. It made him think of films that were dark and cerebral, where a lonely hero came apart under the weight of what he or she had lost.

Eli preferred to consider it under the context of films, because films allowed one to feel the pain of the human condition but at a safe distance.

Arguably, Eli had now lived through the stuff that he would normally watch on television, but such things were different in person. When the pain was immediate and firsthand and there was nothing and nobody to ease it, because he had been so very alone.

But they had come together eventually. Now he had Greer, Scott, Chloe, Camille, and TJ.

And Young…

Forever Young.

He smiles a little because that’s the title of an absurd film from the 80’s with Mel Gibson and Elijah Wood.

It’s easier to consider things from beneath the blanket of fiction. It was such a comforting distraction…

…as Young had pulled farther and farther from all of them; farther into himself and into some ghost of Rush that he carried with him.

Something that hardened his eyes and his words. Something that made him stiff and uncomfortable around all of those who he had once been so close to. Something that brought him oddly a little closer to Chloe and Eli himself. But still, Young maintained a distance.

Eli stood before Rush’s grave. Young wasn’t here.

He was here, but…

Young wasn’t here anymore.

Because nobody should ever count Rush out, ever.

Because Rush always found a way to circumvent, to get around whatever barrier’s opposed him. Whatever had been holding him back for a year.

Eli had hoped he wasn’t dead. He had really, really hoped, and that hope had become increasingly desperate over the course of the past year.

It crystallized on the day when Young admitted whatever was happening to him was getting worse and not better. When Young explained what Rush had done to his mind that was slowly twisting him into something distant and sad. Something full of strange intellect and abilities. When Eli had been so, _so_ desperately hopeful as he said,

_“He thought he could come back, it’s the only explanation.  He would never, ever leave you like this.”_

_“I’m not so sure about that,” Young had replied._

_“I am,” Eli had said with an assurance he did not feel.  “I’m positive.  He wouldn’t do this to you.  He wouldn’t be able to.”_

_“He was perfectly capable of exactly that,” Young said in that way that sounded like Rush.  “When the alternative was letting me die.  Was_ watching _me die.”_

_“He had to have planned for this.  He had to have known.  He orchestrated everything else so perfectly.” Eli had said with frustrated determination._

_“I concur,” Young snapped sounding so much like Rush that it hurt.  “And what then, is the obvious inference?”_

_Eli had grimaced and looked away.  “We don’t know.  We don’t know anything for sure.”_

_“Say it,” Young demanded, and this too was like Rush. This sharp anger that demanded the answer he already knew._

_“That he failed,” Eli whispered.  “That he’s dead.”  He swallowed.  “That he’s dead, and you—you’re stuck like this.”_

_“Yes,” Young hissed. How on Earth had he come to this?_

_“I don’t believe it,” Eli said.  “I don’t.  I won’t.”_

Now he stood staring down at the note in his hands feeling sad, feeling relieved, feeling…so many things he couldn’t pin down and name.

_“Eli,  
It turns out you were right.  Let everyone know, would you?”_

There were tears in his eyes and an ache in his chest as he read the words and grasped their meaning. He stood and helplessly cried like the child everybody thought he was. The tears were sad, but they were happy too. Because Young was gone, that meant Rush was gone too. They were both gone from this plane of existence and gone from his life and the lives of their friends forever.

But, they were together, and that was no small thing.

So he thought of the most salient film imaginable; he thought of Good Will Hunting.

He thought of Robin Williams looking down at the note in his hands (A note which read _‘sorry but I gotta see about a girl’_ ) and saying “Son of a bitch, he stole my line,” as the music swelled into something peaceful and happy. He thought of Ben Affleck smiling at the empty house because Will had moved on. Moved on to something better, the way he had always been meant to.

So, Eli folded the note and put it in his pocket and remembered that music. It told the viewer that everything was going to work out for the best. That events would happen unseen by a camera and they would be good. That people would be happy and whole and alive.

He would do like Young asked and let everybody know. There would be tears and embraces. There would be a shared understanding that it was for the best. And it certainly was.

In a film, Eli would look up at the sky and some unseen gust of wind, some glint in the sky, would be his sign that everything was ok.

So he tipped his head back and looked up.

In a film, he might speak to the air and ask for a sign.

He shrugged at the empty air and nothing happened. The air was still, the sky was empty. He laughed to himself because, as was always the case, he was not in a film, and thing were rarely so perfect.

It was when he began walking back to his car that the wind picked up and blew at him from behind, pushing him forward.

Eli stopped and stared in astonishment. Then he started laughing. Deep bursts of laughter that bubbled up and forced him to bend at his waist and rest a hand on his knees.

That was his answer. That _had_ to have been Rush, because who else would shove him as an answer.

He was glad nobody had seen that though, because…well, surely he had looked a little nuts giggling in a graveyard, but that was ok. He grinned at the air and the sky and said nothing. There was nothing further; no second burst of wind, no magical signs clearly telling him what was being said.

But Rush was never big on spelling things out. And Young…well the sun was shining brightly and the sky was a vast, seemingly endless blue.

In the coming weeks he would tell everybody, and it would be as hard and upsetting as he had expected, but everybody had understood. Through official channels there was an attempt to locate Young, who had apparently vanished without a trace.

There were no more significant gusts of wind. No noteworthy blue skies. There was wind and there was sky, and Eli was not going to start obsessing about the weather as if it was at all related to the machinations of higher beings who surely had a lot on their minds, what with all the access to space and time that they had at their disposal.

He thought of Doctor Who and smiled.

He visits Rush’s grave. Young doesn’t get one because he is officially deemed missing, presumed dead. Apparently the SGC isn’t interested in an empty grave for somebody _presumed_ dead, but Eli likes to imagine if a grave was necessary, it would be here, beside Rush. A memorial to the incredible dynamic pair they had been. Clashing so hard they nearly broke, but when they came together it was kind of perfect.

Today, Ginn joines him for his yearly graveside visit. It’s been three years since Rush, two years since Young… She sort of remembers Rush and Young from the ship and then from some meetings she had with Rush when they were both code in the ship. He vaguely remembers the one he got to join and he knows that she has some understanding of the hole these two left when they abruptly exited his life. Even if it’s just an abstraction of an understanding, it’s enough

In a film, this is the moment when the music would swell and the viewer would know that everything will be alright in the end.

Eli loves movies. He always has.

He always will, and he will always draw parallels between what is fiction and what is not, if only to soften the blows that life deals him. If only to brighten the moments that need brightening.

So, Ginn stands beside him and she holds his hand. He turns to her and smiles, because he is always grateful to be with her.

She smiles back and briefly squeezes his hand.

As they turn and walk away the wind blows through the trees, making the leaves rustle and sway like someone’s laughing. It’s a sunny day and the sky is populated by a few hopeful wisps of cloud.

The sky and the wind and the trees watch as Eli and Ginn walk back to his car hand in hand.

Eli loves movies, because he likes complete endings and the feeling of a problem coupled with it’s solution.

He thinks those two have found a pretty decent ending as far as they go.

He’s got time to find his own.

**Author's Note:**

> It started because first off I have a deep unabiding love for Eli and I just really really wanted to see his reaction to Young's note. Also the whole scenario reminded me A LOT of Good Will Hunting and Eli is definitely the kind of nerd who would recognize those parallels.
> 
> Also aside from that note that dialogue between Eli and Young is taken from (I think) Chapter 69 of FoD


End file.
